I spent a lot of time trying to layer upon layer upon layer as I wrote. I think that's often the fear of a writer, that little nuances won't get picked up.
So much of my writing process is trying to eliminate any kind of shame or fear of the thoughts that I'm having.
In my experience when I do try to avoid something, it makes its way into the work anyway. To be in front of it and just make friends with it is easier for me.
So much of my writing process is trying to eliminate any kind of shame or fear of the thoughts that I'm having. Where I would usually backspace, I stop and say, "You know what? This is important, that I say how I feel and don't sugarcoat it, and don't avoid it." In my experience when I do try to avoid something, it makes its way into the work anyway. To be in front of it and just make friends with it is easier for me.
After a while, being so honest and so vulnerable on the page ends up affecting my own kind of self possession in the world, because I am not afraid of myself and my own thoughts. I think so much of being a woman, of being a social being, of being polite, is quieting those thoughts. There's so much we try not to say as we go through the day. There's a lot of tempering and self-editing. It is a relief to make writing that space where I don't need to do that.
One of the challenges was to make a cinematic movie about literally talking heads and to try to make it feel like something you want to see in a theater.
Nobody is trying to save energy. We're trying to shift our use of fuel. Forget saving energy; if we get the right kind of energy, there are endless amounts.
If you get called on to help somebody pull focus to some good cause, that's good use of your fame. I don't try to avoid that.
I love 'Modern Family;' I don't exactly watch it when it's on, but I try to catch up on it when I can; it's one of my favorite shows.
I try to be a good, diligent actor.
Whenever you're dealing with fantasy, and you're doing vampires or anything that is not too based in reality, and you try to base it in reality, you have so much of a greater chance of sounding hokey.
Part of my reaction to my diagnosis of infertility was deeply sarcastic and critical, part of it was morbid, part of it was numb, part of it was neurotic and desperate. To mush all of those notes together would cancel them out. I ended up just trying to keep them as separate as possible.
I always try to create conflict and drama in my books; it's the engine of the novel.
I was always an outsider, always standing outside, observing and trying to figure things out. Which is exactly what you need to do as a writer, I suppose.
I try to do one to two days with no meat. I try to lessen my gluten. Those are things that I struggle with.
I've always wanted to do things differently, and if one person or ten people are doing the same, then I want to do it differently. I love to travel, I love art, I love fashion. I love going to great restaurants and trying different things. Different cultures are inspiring to me.
I certainly struggled when I was little and didn't have an easy time, so I try to put that stuff in my work.
I try to put my own history in my work.
Automatically everybody thinks of me as an actress who is trying to sing. And if I weren't me I'd probably think the same thing.
So it was doing all this research or going to the archives or doing all these interviews or traveling, and then trying as much as I can to delete all of that research in a later draft so that all the reader cares about is the characters.
There are certain writers I can't read when I'm trying to write because their voices are so distinct. Cormac McCarthy, he's the most different writer from anything I've ever written, but there's something about those really spare sentences that is just tough - it would be too much of an influence. Grace Paley is my favorite writer. Her stuff is so voice-driven, when I read her a lot I want to make my writing more voice-y and dialogue-heavy. I love a lot of stuff in translation.
You are trying to lure us into revealing information you're not entitled to? With chocolate and wine? Are you amateurs?
The paralysis that we have right now when we think about migration is partly because we can't imagine what the world would look like in the future. So I think it's important for writers and artists to try to imagine that.
I don't want to be anxious on my day-to-day life. I want to try to imagine a future I'd like to live in and then write books and do things that, in my own small way, make it more likely that that future will come to exist.
If we try to 'protect ourselves', our nation-states begin to look like prisons.
